Amtrak's Sunset Limited - White House Petition

we petition the obama administration to: http://wh.gov/XMFy

Restore train service to Amtrak's Sunset Limited east of New Orleans, Louisiana.

Since Amtrak has no definate date or plans to restore rail passenger service on The Sunset Limited east of New Orleans while citing to me that they are in negotiations with perspective states; the prospect looks like a long drawn out process with no immediate progress.

I am asking the United States, Congress and The Cabinet of the Obama Administration to intervene, finance and restore Amtrak service on The Sunset Limited eastward into Florida terminating in either Orlando, Jacksonville or Miami.

Over seven (7) years have passed since Hurricane Katrina knocked out and disrupted Amtrak service in the corridor serving the east side of New Orleans, prompting Amtrak to cease operations indefinately.


Created: Nov 20, 2012

Issues: Transportation and Infrastructure

While we already have a topic related to the Sunset Limited, including the annuled portion, I'm not averse to talking about the endless Katrina annulment east of NO here, and news related to that, and this petition.

The owners, administrators, and moderators of railroad.net have no position regarding this petition, and unless expressly stated, do not endorse it. (Thank you Mssr. Norman).

Perhaps I should not have merged all the SU stuff in one thread, but I'm OCD where that's concerned.

Keep it civil, please.

As a member and not a moderator;

I find this petition incredibly fiscally irresponsible and also expensive in terms of political capital to any worthwhile efforts towards HSR that the railroad has taken. I accept the status quo with the long distance system, but I refuse to support new "dream trains", especially one that is already established as a massive timekeeping failure.

We cannot hope to build a reasonable regional corridor system while also spending political capital on dream trains. That era has come and gone, just as the conestoga wagon has come and gone and the steamship industry has come and gone.

Just out of curiosity, I'm wondering whether they're planning to clean up the spelling and punctuation before submitting the petition.

Who are "they"? The original post uses both "we" and "I".
I'm assuming the petition's one person's effort.

I'm assuming there will be more than one signature on the petition when it goes forward -- if that's where it's going. Surely somebody could proofread.

Ignoring the grammatical and spelling errors within the petition as submitted and that it is now 120/25000 of the way to be included in White House daily briefing material - let alone land in the Oval for the President's personal review, Amtrak has appeared to have won a victory with the Sunset discontinuance that I honestly thought would result in grief.

That Amtrak discontinued all service over a route that required 180 Day Notice under ARAA '97 with apparent impunity means that Amtrak at their prerogative can discontinue service over any route. While this hardly suggests that a stealth order of Adios drumhead signs for every Long Distance train has been placed, it does mean that if a train is a hopeless loser and that a route has lost its "political capital", it could be gone at will.

In the case of Sunset East, it's "capital" in the name of former US Senator Lott left "The Hill" for K Street. Passengers? it never had any. Operations? a nightmare; it wasn't even close to being drive time competitive and missed traffic potential with its bypass of Pensacola. Maintenance, when it operated through to Miami, resulted in labor unrest when Amtrak flew in (and lodged) mechanical personnel from wherever (LA or Chi) displacing Hialeah workers.

All that is left are some local advocacy groups; even NARP seems to think there were other wars to be fought. The traveling public has long forgotten Sunset East.

It's gone folks, and some petition that's going nowhere, save maybe the petitioner's satisfaction he exercised his unquestioned First Amendment rights, is not about to bring it back. But lest we forget, while to exercise a right is protected, there is no protection from the consequences of exercising that right. The "barbs" that this topic originator has taken from his lack of grammar when submitting the petition is indicative of that.

As I understand these petitions, it only requires a response from the WH.

And it's quite possible the response ends up being, "Nope, it's gone for good" and honestly, I think that would be worthwhile to put a final adios on the route rather than leave it in a limbo.

That said, I still have a hard time fathoming why this particular route did so poorly.

OK restore a train through four states that for the most part could care less about supporting it. This makes absolutely no sense to me at all and I live in Florida. We need more passenger trains but this would be the last one that we really need. I hope this goes where it belongs, in the garbage can.
Noel Weaver

Greg Moore wrote:As I understand these petitions, it only requires a response from the WH.

And it's quite possible the response ends up being, "Nope, it's gone for good" and honestly, I think that would be worthwhile to put a final adios on the route rather than leave it in a limbo.

That said, I still have a hard time fathoming why this particular route did so poorly.

Neither New Oleans nor Orlando make good transportation hubs - for either airlines or trains.
Chicago, Seattle, Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York are. Not having a good hub is just one reason why.

As I understand it,CSX wanted $$$ from Amtrak to restore the route,and/or a new freight route farther inland to be built.
CSX used the Hurricane as the means to get and keep Amtrak off their rails between New Orleans-Jacksonville.
Without state support,it's a moot point anyway

Is there any prospect for reinstatement of service within Northern Florida, even over part of the route; say from Jacksonville to Tallahassee as a shuttle to and from the east coast services?

Mr. Dowling, I would have to answer in the negative to your immediate.

The political climate in Florida is averse to any kind of publicly funded inter city services. The Florida East Coast Ry "All Aboard Florida" initiative is a sham to "fatten up" the railroad for a sale to the State (the State, rightly or wrongly, has invested big $$$$$$ in the development of the Port of Miami for a post-PANAMAX world) and is going nowhere. Therefore, I would not hold any optimism on the point you immediately address.

I've not yet heard that interpretation of the FEC passenger service. It strikes me as one heck of a risky gamble to take with a profitable railroad. They may have a crushing debt load, but anybody does in the case of an LBO, and any company bought using high-interest financing is always in play. When you can fence the railroad to a private party without passenger service, why risk starting something like passenger trains and attempting to fence it to the Florida gov't on a whim?

genearenson wrote:we petition the obama administration to: http://wh.gov/XMFy

Restore train service to Amtrak's Sunset Limited east of New Orleans, Louisiana.

Since Amtrak has no definate date or plans to restore rail passenger service on The Sunset Limited east of New Orleans while citing to me that they are in negotiations with perspective states; the prospect looks like a long drawn out process with no immediate progress.

I am asking the United States, Congress and The Cabinet of the Obama Administration to intervene, finance and restore Amtrak service on The Sunset Limited eastward into Florida terminating in either Orlando, Jacksonville or Miami.

Over seven (7) years have passed since Hurricane Katrina knocked out and disrupted Amtrak service in the corridor serving the east side of New Orleans, prompting Amtrak to cease operations indefinately.


Created: Nov 20, 2012

Issues: Transportation and Infrastructure

I don't think you are going to see service restored anytime soon. Read the following gathered off of the Amtrak website:

http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/970/304/PRI ... -PIP,0.pdf